Items
Theme is exactly
Giovanni’s Room Bookstore (Philadelphia)
-
P.S. your cat is dead A darkly comic exploration of the burgeoning relationship between down-on-his-luck actor Jimmy Zoole and a gay cat burglar he finds looting his apartment. This is the third novel from author and playwright James Kirkwood (1924-1989). According to biographer Sean Egan, Kirkwood was inspired by a series of burglaries at his home on West 58th Street, New York. In their 1979-80 catalogue, Philadelphia bookstore Giovanni’s Room described ‘P.S. Your Cat is Dead’ as “our all-time bestselling gay men’s novel”. Kirkwood adapted it into a play in 1975 and in 2002, it was adapted again into a feature film, directed by Steve Guttenberg, which was rather less well-received. Kirkwood’s ‘There Must Be a Pony!’ was also seized in ‘Operation Tiger’.
-
The vampires This novel is the second by Mexican-American author John Rechy (1931-) to be seized during the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids. The vampires of the title are metaphorical, as a disparate group of people gather on a Caribbean island and unleash their darkest desires via Satanic rituals and witchcraft. The novel is filmic in style and has a character list which includes actresses, priests (Voodoo and Catholic), a “madam”, a possibly murderous male sex worker and “a drug goddess”. In one of their catalogues, Philadelphia gay bookstore Giovanni’s Room described this novel as a departure for Rechy, particularly as it was “non-gay”, although ‘Gay Times’ noted it still had enough in the contents to be interesting to gay readers.